Teach For America Statement on Senator Lamar Alexander’s ESEA Bill

Elisa Villanueva Beard, co-CEO of Teach For America, today released the following statement on the ESEA bill by Senator Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee:

"We commend Senator Alexander for recognizing the urgent need to update and strengthen the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in a bipartisan manner. We applaud his goal of passing a bill that ensures that all children have a fair, equitable and significant opportunity to receive a high-quality education that prepares them for college or the workforce. 

“As an organization that prepares thousands of teachers each year to teach in high-need schools, and has helped prepare tens of thousands of teachers over the last two decades, we were glad to see that the bill recognizes that academic assessments should include multiple measures of student academic achievement, ensures that all children in the state be held to the same high standards, requires that student data be comparable across the state, and mandates that assessment data be disaggregated by race, ethnicity, income, students with disabilities, English learners, gender and migrant status. We hope the Committee recognizes that the best way to reach these goals is to maintain statewide annual assessments in order to ensure there is yearly transparency for all of our nation’s students and to provide critical information for educators, parents, and teacher preparation programs.”

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About Teach For America
Teach For America works in partnership with communities to expand educational opportunity for children facing the challenges of poverty. Founded in 1990, Teach For America recruits and develops a diverse corps of outstanding college graduates and professionals to make an initial two-year commitment to teach in high-need schools and become lifelong leaders in the movement to end educational inequity. Today, 10,600 corps members are teaching in 50 urban and rural regions across the country while more than 37,000 alumni work across sectors to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education. For more information, visit www.teachforamerica.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.